march 2019 – good to read

Journey to Everywhere

Michael Kawitzky (aka as Schwann)
The reprint of Journey to Everywhere chronicles the true adventures of the South African writer, indie-film maker, cyberpunk, psychonaut and family man Schwann Cybershaman while collecting material for the films Cognition Factor (2009) and The Terence McKenna Omnibus (2012). Schwann depicts the early days of the South African internet, Mweb, and how he and his friends pieced it together, drives thousands of clicks during his wild trips around South Africa, meets Annie Sprinkle, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abrahams and Terence McKenna, invites Dennis McKenna to Ibiza, visits Gibraltar and Edinburgh, travels to Basel for Albert Hofmann’s 100th anniversary – always Gonzo style. A former «suit» during the Apartheid era, the freewheeling columnist coins the expressions «cybershamanism» and «webtrance», while regaling us with tales as seen from his unique perspective, having represented South African counterculture internationally since the early nineties. His writing is fast, hilarious, pensive, tender or just plain mad, and he usually has some illegal substance or other in his pockets that keep him going. (See also good to see)
Headspace Press, December 2018

Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work – Seven Spiritual Practices in a Scientific World

Rupert Sheldrake
In this sequel to Science and Spiritual Practices, Rupert looks at seven spiritual practices that are personally transformative and have scientifically measurable effects. The spiritual side of sports; learning form animals; fasting; cannabis, psychedelic and spiritual openings; powers of prayer; holy days and festivals; cultivating good habits, avoiding bad habits and being kind give us a greater sense of connectedness and make us happier and healthier. Sheldrake combines the latest scientific research with his knowledge of mystical traditions around the world and explains why these seven practices work. He looks at their effects inside our brains, throughout our bodies, and on our relationships and asks whether spiritual experiences are essentially illusory, or if they give us direct connections with realms of consciousness greater than our own.
Coronet, January 2019

Future Sacred – The Connected Creativity of Nature

Julie J. Morley
The author offers a new perspective on the human link to the cosmos by unveiling the connected creativity and sacred intelligence of nature. She rejects the narrative of the «survival of the fittest» – the idea that survival requires strife –, advances symbiosis and cooperation as nature’s path of moving forward and shows how an increasingly complex world demands increasingly complex consciousness. Our survival depends upon embracing this consciousness, understanding ourselves as part of nature, as well as relating to nature as sacred. Indigenous cultures lived in relative harmony with nature because they perceived themselves as part of the «ordered whole» of all life – until modernity introduced dualistic thinking, thus separating mind from matter, and humans from nature.
Park Street Press, February 2019

The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change

Bee Wilson
This is a book about the good, the terrible and the avocado toast. The Way We Eat Now explains how modern food, in all its complexity, has transformed our lives and our world. To re-establish eating as something that gives us both joy and health, we need to find out where we are right now, how we got here and what it is that we share. Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson explores everything from meal replacements, the disappearing lunch hour, the rise of veganism, the lack of time to cook and prepare food and the rapid increase in food delivery services. And Bee provides her own doable strategies for how we might navigate the many options available to us to have a balanced, happier relationship with the food we eat.
Harper/Collins, March 2019

The Source of Self-Regard – Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations

Toni Morrison
The Source of Self-Regard is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a meditation on Martin Luther King Jr. and the last by a eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, «black matters» and human rights. She looks at enduring questions of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. Here too she offers piercing commentaries on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise).
Penguin/Random House, February 2019

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